How does 'Poltergeist' draw on actual poltergeist accounts?

How does 'Poltergeist' draw on actual poltergeist accounts?

Author: Icy Sedgwick August 16, 2025 Duration: 27:33

Poltergeist marked Hollywood's big-budget engagement with the ghost film in 1982. Produced by Stephen Spielberg and directed by Tobe Hooper, it took the haunted house film and mashed it together with the family adventure film. Throw in some special effects courtesy of Industrial Light and Magic, and you end up with the film that relocated haunted houses to the suburbs.

The film obliquely references the settlement of land in California and a failure to acknowledge earlier inhabitants of that land. It also explicitly engages with the growing consumer boom of the 1980s, using technology - here in the form of the TV set - as a means to communicate with the other side. It's a film worthy of study for various reasons.

But one of the talking heads in the special feature on the 25th anniversary edition of the film exclaims that everything in the film 'really happened'. Does the depicted activity bear any relation to historically recorded cases of poltergeist activity? Where does the film draw on this record? What are these earlier cases? Let's find out!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/poltergeist-1982-film/

Tell me your supernatural stories: https://forms.gle/WzXyGZLoe8iLZh656

Order Ghostlore: https://geni.us/ghostlore

Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/

Become a member of the Fabulous Folklore Family for bonus episodes and articles at https://patreon.com/bePatron?u=2380595

Buy Icy a coffee or sign up for bonus episodes at: https://ko-fi.com/icysedgwick

Fabulous Folklore Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/fabulous_folklore

Pre-recorded illustrated talks: https://ko-fi.com/icysedgwick/shop

Request an episode: https://forms.gle/gqG7xQNLfbMg1mDv7

Get extra snippets of folklore on Instagram at https://instagram.com/icysedgwick

Find Icy on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/icysedgwick.bsky.social

'Like' Fabulous Folklore on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fabulousfolklore/


Each week, Fabulous Folklore with Icy offers a compact, fifteen-minute dive into the strange and storied shadows of our world’s traditions. Host Icy Sedgwick, a writer steeped in fantasy and Gothic horror, brings a storyteller’s eye to the material, weaving together tales of local legends, deep-rooted superstitions, and ancient myths. The podcast moves beyond simple retellings to consider the cultural soil from which these stories grew-why people believed what they did, how these narratives functioned in society, and the peculiar, often unsettling details that make them endure. You’ll hear about the oddities and occult practices that textbooks often overlook, all delivered with a blend of curiosity and a slight chill. It’s a consistently engaging exploration for anyone fascinated by the weird corners of history and human belief, a weekly reminder that our world is far more mysterious than it seems. Sedgwick’s background ensures the tales are told with both authority and a palpable sense of wonder, making each short episode a perfect gateway into a larger, fabulously folkloric universe. This isn’t just a catalog of curiosities; it’s an invitation to look at the familiar landscapes around us and imagine the layers of story hidden just beneath the surface, all packed into a brief, compelling listen that easily fits into a daily routine.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Fabulous Folklore with Icy
Podcast Episodes
Elizabeth Blackwell: Pioneering Herbalist and Botanical Illustrator [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:21
If you’re interested in herbalism or plant lore, chances are that you’ve perused a herbal or two in your time. Culpeper's Complete Herbal: A Compendium of Herbs and Their Uses, Annotated for Modern Herbalists, Healers, a…
Folklore and Storytelling: A Narrative Match Made in Heaven [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 51:24
Storytelling is something we all do on a daily basis, whether we’re aware of it or not. Maybe we’re telling a funny anecdote about something that happened on the way to work. Perhaps we’re recounting how we first met the…
Revenants on the Redway with Dr Steph Lay [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 59:38
Dr Steph Lay is a folk horror writer, psychologist and researcher, gathering and sharing local stories of the unexplained for a project investigating whether the new city of Milton Keynes might be more haunted than anyon…
Folklore and Cinema: The Trick Films of Georges Méliès [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:03
Visionary film director and stage magician Georges Méliès is perhaps the earliest filmmaker who saw the visual potential of folklore. Among others, mermaids, sirens, ghosts, devils, and sorcerers are plentiful in his fil…
Theatre Superstitions: Whistling, the Ghost Light, and Macbeth [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:06
Going to the theatre can often feel like a magical experience. You sit in the dark, watching a story unfold in front of you, with your imagination filling in the gaps between the sets. It’s unsurprising that theatre supe…
Cursed Artworks: Three Haunted Paintings and their Superstitions [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:21
Folklore and the arts are almost natural bedfellows. As we saw with the work of Newcastle-based painter Ralph Hedley, artists can capture local traditions for posterity. The Pre-Raphaelites created some of the most endur…
Divination Using Clouds, Flames, Ashes, and Dreams [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 16:52
Studying the shapes of things is a popular means of divination, relying on human pattern recognition abilities. Look at reading tea leaves and coffee grounds, or tasseography, which rely on spotting symbols in the cup. T…
Random Chance Divination: Casting Lots and Throwing Dice [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 17:29
Divination is a beautifully varied practice, with a plethora of tools and practices designed to give insight into situations. Practices like reading tea leaves or tarot cards already appear on this podcast. But what abou…
Pendulum Dowsing: From the Sieve and Shears to Looking for Love [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:30
Last week, we looked at the use of dowsing to find treasure or criminals. Like water dowsing, this method requires the use of a rod that twitches in the hands when the target is close. But the other method of dowsing inv…